


Can't Pretend Anymore

by Path



Series: Pretend [3]
Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-29
Updated: 2011-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-23 05:16:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Path/pseuds/Path
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Problem Sleuth found everything he wanted in life, but it was divided between two people. He can't keep this charade going forever. Someday he'll have to stop pretending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Pretend Anymore

**Author's Note:**

> And it's the final installment (I think, unless I want to do a fourth piece from Dame's perspective, but I think I'm good here). Needed to make sure everyone is unhappy for everyone.

He doesn't know how hard this is for you.

Spades Slick is demanding and aggressive and you can't completely explain why you want him, but you do. That doesn't mean he's right. Tonight you find it harder than ever to ignore, because it feels like when he talks, Slick takes your hand, plunges it into his chest, and wraps your fingers around his heart. You can feel every pulse and beat sticky against your fingertips, in your head. Non-metaphorically, you know exactly what Spades Slick wants now, because he tells you, openly and brokenly. He doesn't expect you to change, but he still asks you to, and it wrecks you.

"She doesn't deserve you," he whispers into your back, as you wait to sleep, body pulsing with the combination of energy and exhaustion he left you with. It's the first time he's said it, outright, the first time he's actually mentioned her. Immediately, sick guilt floods your stomach.

"That's not true," you say, because it isn't. Dame doesn't deserve what you're doing to her, even if she doesn't know about it. But you're not going to listen to Slick talk about her. You couldn't do that. "And stop it," you say, but it doesn't have much force.

"Fine," he mutters against your shoulder blade. "Then you don't deserve her. Tell her that. Tell her something." You screw your eyes shut and grit your teeth, because you can't, doesn't he understand you can't?

"Shut up," you say, because unlike the last one, this one is true. Your heart crimps in your chest. "I'm not telling her anything, Slick."

He seems to take that one as read, and drifts into sleep, snoring into your shoulder with his arm thrown around you. You don't think you could move if you wanted to, because even in sleep, Spades Slick has an iron grip. You stay awake and let black guilt eat the rest of your energy.

You're back at the office the next day, eyes empty and bloodshot like Pickle Inspector's. He just stays up all night, though. Maybe it's a condition. You're pretty sure he's not being wracked with guilt over being the worst piece of scum in Midnight City. Guess you can only have one worst piece of scum.

There's nothing to do, and you flip through old case files and pace until you realize your phone is broken again, and then you leave, because being cooped up anywhere will destroy you.

You don't go home, though. You go see your girlfriend. You've got your own places, mostly because you felt bad waking her up crawling in at four in the morning smelling like blood. She can deal with you being a detective and getting shot up a lot if she doesn't have to see the worst of it. You sort of wish you hadn't gotten separate apartments. It would have made it a lot harder to fall into this thing you've got with Slick, if you didn't have somewhere to go. But who are you kidding? Spades Slick has places all over town, and you'd have just ended up in one of them instead.

But you really shouldn't be thinking about him now. You should be thinking about her. The two of you have dinner together, and it's really nice. She's your little comfort zone in the middle of Midnight City. The sun shines in this apartment, and it's full of girly things, lace and daisies and stuff. You always find it cute, though admittedly these days the emotion is tinged with something more bittersweet.

You are so afraid. You love her, of course you love her. Is she the one you're going to lose? Or is it going to be Slick?

You excuse yourself to the bathroom, and throw some water on your face, because you're not sure whether you're having a heart attack or a panic attack, but whatever it is is starting to hurt. Your eyes in the mirror are still green, but the sleepless nights and guilt are taking their toll, and you look as bad as if Slick had decked you a few times. That hasn't happened for awhile, you realize with a sort of dismay.

Impossibly, you think you miss it. You could use the shit kicked out of you. You deserve it.

You pace the bathroom and wrack your brains over your fucked-up life. You didn't want to say it. You didn't, but it's true. You love Spades Slick, skinny weasel he is. He's callous and violent and possessive and you want him all to yourself, you want to have all that zealous jealousy pointed at you. Once the two of you just gave each other a wide berth (different worlds), but you've never been able to just call him your friend. Slick is just too intense, too _much_ for friendship.

You wanted him too badly. He was everything you were missing.

You hate to say it, locked right now in your girlfriend's house, with her just a room away and waiting. You love her too. You still do. You can't help it. She danced through your life like the ballerina in the window, catching glimpses of her in passing and being entranced. At the end of the day, when you thought it was all over, she pulled you back. She fixed you up, and she still does.

And she was sort of made to your brain's specifications. There's that, too. Sometimes, being so similar is a pain in the neck, but usually, she just knows you so well that she anticipates everything you care to do. Right up until you met Slick, because he just threw your entire life and brain off track and you feel like you got twisted into a different person altogether.

Twisted. Twisted is the operative word.

You see it in her eyes when you sit back down, but you ignore it. You both ignore it through dinner (nice) and your evening (nice), and everything in general is comfortable and the way it's always been, but deformed through this sickness you brought in. When you play a deep low menacing tone beneath something entirely innocent, the whole thing gets creepy. Here, it just gets painful. These days are ending.

Before you turn the lamp out, you curl around her at night, your little angel who saved your life. To your surprise, even though her eyes were sickly knowing, even though it's hung in the air, she turns around in your arms and pulls you to her. Her lips are soft. She tastes sweet. You run your hands over her curves and kiss her fingers and take refuge in her from yourself. You throw a sheet over the devastation inside yourself and pretend it's not there for a while.

The two of you move together, and it's slow and rhythmic and she's so lovely. You bury a hand into her hair and revel even in that, in the silkiness enveloping your fingertips. It feels like forever, a beautiful drawn-out forever before you do finally slide into her, closing your eyes and letting low-thrilling energy help you forget.

It's not the pulse-racing adrenaline Slick sparks in you. It's the other half. You can't imagine the world without either, now. The two of you crash together in her white bed. She kisses you, her face flushed against the pale sheets, her hair thrown across the pillow. She kisses you, and then she turns out the light.

Like every time in recent memory, it's only so long before your other half begins to make himself known. You almost thought you'd drift into sleep, clasping your girl close and drained of all energy. But you can almost feel Slick, Slick of last night, with his arm thrown over you in turn, muttering into your shoulder. You duck your head to curl against her shoulder and your thoughts go ahead and churn around in misery.

At some point, you must have gone to sleep, because you wake up in the morning to see Dame dressing. She's entrancing, short skirt showing off her legs. She zips the back up somehow and then it shows off her front, too. She sees you watching and gives you a fond smile and a kiss. "Let yourself out, will you?" she says.

"Where are you going?" you ask. You voice is rough, and you feel sort of groggy.

"Away," she says, and you start to wake up. "I'm sorry. I think this is it," she continues. "I just... I didn't know how to do this."

"Do what?" you ask, because you aren't all the way awake just yet, and you've got to be sure about whatever this is.

"I'm leaving," she says. "Or rather, I'm leaving for the day. You're leaving for good."

"I-" you say, but she cuts you back off.

"It's not your fault," she says, and suddenly you realize the sadness in her eyes isn't about you. It's her own, and it looks a hell of a lot like yours. "I just don't think I can keep this going. I just wanted the one last time."

"That was our one last time?" you ask her. You can't believe this is happening. Your heart is sort of tearing itself to pieces but you haven't quite gotten to the point of realization where your mouth catches up with your heart and both of them say "don't go".

"Yes," she says, simply. "I don't want to tear us to pieces, love. But what I'm doing will."

"What you're doing?" you ask blindly.

"I think it's better if we both just keep moving," she says, and then she comes to you, a rush of movement and colour. She brushes the hair back from your forehead and kisses it, and then her eyes meet yours, pale green and full of tears despite her calm tone. That kicks it for you and your eyes well up too, and you feel this rush of unfairness, of grief and robbery and misery. "No," she says seeing it. "You're going to be alright. You will. We both will."

Then she's gone, out the door in that little rush of wind, and you hear the front door close.

Later, you stumble around the house, shower, make coffee and down too much of it. But that's later, and for now, all you do is stay where she left you, in her bed, and curl your arms around one of her pillows. And you cry bitterly.

But eventually, you do get up, and you do shower, and you do down enough coffee to wake up most of Midnight City. You take your razor out of the cabinet, and your toothbrush, and your extra socks from the top right drawer. You move sort of in a daze. What happened there? You feel like the ground's been pulled out from under you. You were going to have to be the one who made the hard choice. It was supposed to be you.

You walk home and put your stuff on your bed. You look out the window for awhile. You keep losing patches of the day. You don't know how it got to be three thirty. You don't look at anything specific. You just let your eyes unfocus and you think about her.

She was the one who saved you. She pulled you back when you thought you were gone. She was always your angel like that. And you wonder if she was just doing the same thing, again. But it doesn't really matter. It's over now. Her words made you wonder, but you don't need to know. You'd rather just think of her as your angel forever.

That night, still reeling and a little empty, with no food in your stomach and a long day of nothing past, you go to see Slick. You find him in the back of the Midnight Lounge, staring unhappily at nothing and, you suspect, waiting for you. It hurts your heart, but it'll be the last time you see it. You can promise that, at least.

He looks up to you and his empty eyes fill up with life, like he takes it just from being in the room with you. "Hey," he manages, though there's so much more to say. "You're here."

"Yeah," you say. "I'm here." Then you sit down and crack open a bottle you brought from the front, and put a pair of glasses on the table.

"What's this for?" he asks. Suspicious Slick can't let anything go.

"Drinking," you tell him, and maybe something in your manner gets through to him, because he lets you sit down and he drinks with you. Later, slumped into the couch with Slick passed out and using your leg for a pillow, you say, "it's over," aloud. Slick doesn't respond. "We're through," you say. "That's the end."

Well, not exactly. You have to explain it to Slick somehow, and you're sure you forgot something at Dame's place. You don't know how you'll deal if you ever run into her. You didn't stop loving her or anything. But it's still over, and the choice got made for you. She did save you, she saved you from having to hurt her.

You look around the back room at the Midnight Lounge and you wonder if it was the right choice. But you didn't make it, so she made it for you. "I'm done pretending," you say to passed-out Slick. "I'm done."

And then you sleep.


End file.
